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Please don’t turn away from this post because you have different beliefs than me. I’ve spend more hours in a church than I have spent doing homework my entire life. I have been raised to be accepting of everyone’s views, and for a few minutes of reading time, I ask for you to be as well. This blog, I know, has been more of a platform for me to blindly tell the world how I feel about things rather than the network for my creative writing, as it was meant for. Sadly as of the moment all my creativity is being pushed to find new and exciting ways to keep myself from failing math this semester. So, bare with me.

I was raised to be a roman catholic. I suppose I should capitalize that seeing as many feel their cults deserve pronoun-like respect. As a Roman Catholic, and going to Catholic primary school, I got to learn the ways of the lord, and the tales of the bible. My grandparents and parents thought they were doing me a favor; bringing me into their religious beliefs before I could spell the world Mississippi (Also a pronoun but sadly not a cult) and forcing me to spend more time in my day for religious study than mathematics. Yes, from a young age I was doomed to be bad at numbers. But, that really shouldn’t be the motif of this.

I then moved on to a Lutheran faith when my Catholic school closed and I was introduced to people of other belief. I went to Lutheran church and spend time with a Lutheran family for a few years. During this time I was an adolescent so I was questioning everything. I was questioning why I was supposed to learn algebra and why everyone was so sure there was a god. I was also really, really afraid of dying. From a young age the concept of Hell was real to me, and from a young age I thought even saying certain words would doom me to a lake of fire for the rest of eternity (Which doesn’t make any sense, but Unicorns don’t either and they’re right there in the bible as well). So, I didn’t really understand why people even believed this stuff, and why the people who opposed were so adamant of opposing and proving religions wrong.

I know, I know, a lot of back-story.

Anyway, I stopped believing in god around winter of freshman year of high school. I came to realize that at night, when I was lying in bed and talking to my ceiling, I just made myself sadder. I begged my ceiling to be happy and to make my parents love each other and to show me signs of why I was even on this earth. But, you know, ceilings are pretty quiet.

The more and more my 14-year-old self stepped away from religion, the more and more I realized how awesome the world was. I could say the word Fuck and not have to worry about drowning in fire. I could see nature as something that would only happen in small circumstances of evolution, not the easy creation of a higher power. Suddenly everything was brighter. The evils of the world were not a response of the devil, and this so called devil would have no impact on my life. Everything I did wrong was okay. We were all going to die, so why must we live a perfect and boring life on earth while being simultaneously judged by a figment of our imaginations? Religion seemed really dumb.

It was easier in the fact that my super religious friend seemed even dumber. When I wanted to talk about college and the future, she would kind of just zone out and say that god had a plan for her. And I saw more and more why people looked at me weirdly when I tried to witness to them about Jesus and tell them it would all be okay. It seemed really stupid on my part.

I didn’t know what to call myself, so I just kind of said “I don’t believe in anything”. And then recently I found out what I do believe, or think, rather, is nihilism. We are just specs upon specs of specs of randomness (Dr. Seuss had a good thing going, man). And nothing you, or I ever do will make a change in the ultimate force of how things will play out. In ten years that time I ran into a trash can won’t matter. In one hundred years, you and I probably be on no one’s minds ever. Like, ever. Unless I write an amazing book, of course. But, let’s not get our hopes up.

Personally, I like not having a higher power watching over at me. Every time something fails, which is usually a daily occurrence, I don’t feel as if I did something wrong, or as if the devil is trying to trick me into thinking my cult leader is upset with my actions. Because my actions don’t matter. Not really. And I’m not afraid of death anymore. When I die, my brain will stop functioning. I’m no Bill Nye, but I know that when I die, I won’t have any thoughts. And the thing is, not having any thoughts means I can’t summon up a thought or emotion of fear. I simply won’t exist. And the only scary thing about not existing is getting to that point.

The brain named itself.

I didn’t make up that cool quote, but I know it’s true. And it really helps my point. The brain is what is your thoughts. Yeah, how profound, but without thoughts, you couldn’t think about god, or that you have a soul. A soul. Your brain made thought waves, or whatever, and you thought up the idea of a soul. There is no part of your body that is a soul. It’s kind of (as I see it) a network of your consciousness. But, without the consciousness, the idea couldn’t exist. If we look at it with a timeline, the brain and all of it’s thoughts would have to exist before the soul so as the soul could be there. But since the brain and it’s thoughts are simply a network of signals and neurons which make up your thought, there really isn’t a soul. So, when your brain stops, so does the so-called “soul”.

I’ve confused you, but I’m not trying to persuade you.

This is just how I see the world. It makes sense to me, and it’s more logical than a higher power and more logical than eternal life. So, then, why even say this aloud (or… type it aloud?) if I’m a nihilist and know that nothing really matters? Well, Watson, that is a good question. Probably a better question is why am I asking myself questions posing as John Watson. But, you know, logistics.

There really isn’t any point to anything, as I see it. That’s why I don’t care about things that I probably should care about. And talking about how we all mean nothing sometimes makes me angry because, truth be told, I’d like for something to have meaning. But life does have meaning. It’s a time for you, and your thoughts and consciousnesses to be happy, to find something you enjoy. To live. And that’s why I kind of like viewing the would in the way I do. I don’t have to succumb to rituals, or rules of faith, or fright that I will screw something up. I can just live, and enjoy that the universe kind of messed up and made earth, and me, and everyone who is alive. And I can just live, and not worry so much because in the end, we’re all going to die. And I can just live because there really isn’t any other point I can make.

I’d love to hear your thoughts and how you probably think mine are completely misguided, so comment away. And that isn’t sarcasm. I haven’t had a comment for months, so please, type away.

Hopefully throughout the next few weeks I can get back to fiction writing, which is what I enjoy most (Besides putting puns in essays). And if I do, I’ll be quick to share it here on this blog, which if you aren’t following you should start following. It’s like super easy, you just gotta click that button that is somewhere to the right of this, and somewhere on top of this page, I’m pretty sure. Seriously. Just click it. Please.

Lastly, you can always comment for things you’d like to see, or send me a shout on twitter, which is also a click away in the right column somewhere. Thanks for reading this and as always, keep on writing.

Okay, so, I understand if you can’t pronounce that word on the first try. It’s okay; most text boxes on the inter-webs think it deserves the dreaded red squiggle underneath. But it’s real, no matter how many times people try to tell me I’m making things up in my head, or I’m just saying I have Synesthesia to get attention. Which is ultimately pretty dumb considering most humans factor that I’m weird enough already.

Anyway, to get to the point of the title, I’m writing this to try an explain Synesthesia as best as I can. Many people know a basic understanding about it, which is that some people randomly see colors floating around when they listen to music. And that is a type, called sound-to-color synesthesia, and many musical artists are well known for having such condition. There is also most commonly, grapheme-color, the association and experiencing of colors with letters and words. And there are number form, spacial sequence, and personification synesthesia types (along with others that are more rare). But that’s a lot to take in, and for a more scientific view, I suggest more reliable sources.

To start off my lucid tale of weirdness, I’ll tell you that I wasn’t the one to discover that I had Synesthesia. One of my best friends thought I was weird enough, I guess, to look up on the internet why I associated things in such a weird fashion. She told me about Synesthesia, and at first I thought that I was completely normal. What, normal people don’t see the map of the year around them? To make a long story short, I looked it up, and more and more I found out that this was something I had, and that other people had it as well.

And after looking back in old notebooks and whatnot, I found that years before I even heard of this, I was drawing ovals with the months of the year in accordance to how I saw them, and numbers with their assigned colors and personalities. Yes, I thought. I have found my place!

Messier versions can be found in 7-year-old-Kylie’s torn up notebooks

So I began telling other people as soon as I found out they don’t see the world like I did. Most thought I was pretty amazing, and others thought I was weird, which, as I’ve mentioned in other posts, was pretty normal for people to do. It still is. And I did more research on it, and read other’s experiences and how there were different types. I had found a little community of people and literature all dedicated to this thing that none of my friends understood. Like me, there were people who saw colors when they listened to music, and they knew each number and letter’s color, and they felt the week and year surround them in a perfect oval of order. These were the people who understood.

And they were the only people who understood. After a while of bringing up this sixth sense of mine, I noticed that most people didn’t understand, and some even got annoyed. Other’s dismissed it as something I was making up, as they could easily associate a color to a letter. A is blue, there you go, it’s so easy, Kylie. Well, no. A is red. A will always be red and I can’t imagine a world in which A is blue. I didn’t pick red for A. And when I read the word Applause, I know it is in black ink on the purplish background that is this blog, but in my mind it is yellowish. I’ve only met one other person who had it and even then we argued about what colors things were.

Many people think that when I listen to music, my view of the world is somehow obstructed by the colors it brings. And I always have a hard time explaining that it isn’t there, but it is, well, you know, it’s there in my head. Around this time the other conversationalist will have given up. But I guess the best way to explain it is comparing it to a day dream. When you daydream, you’re seeing the world pass by you, but in your head the pictures of your dream are playing. I see the band and I see my sheet music, but in my head the saxophones are drilling this fuzzy orange hue as the drums cascade a nice but subtle pang of resilient brown.

Okay, so that makes sense. I guess explaining the sound-to-color isn’t as hard as I thought.

All dressed up and no place to go except in between three and five.

Yeah, sorry picture I found on the internet, four is pink. Four is the only pink number, actually. But it isn’t the only girl number. Four, five, six, and nine are all girls. Eight is the older brother of four, and he has this cute crush on nine, even though Gothic nine, the older sister of both six and three, is in love with ten, who is a jackass. Three is a boy who is a muddy brown color and is best friends with two and four. Five is acquaintances with six, who is reddish and kind of selfconcious about her weight. Seven is the golden older brother of five, who is a pale yellow and pretty indifferent about everything.

This is when people usually think I’m crazy, or I just made this up when I was little. It makes sense, if we look back to those “factor families” or whatever they were called when you learned simple algebra in first grade. Either way, it has stuck with me, and I can’t really imagine a world where the simple integers don’t have lives and colors. I was trying to explain this to someone recently, and I fee like this person will always view me from a higher point of craziness than before.

Personification, as best as I can explain, is like connecting with characters you’ve written. As a writer you didn’t necessarily pick how they turned out; they just are that way, and the writing just flows the way it goes, be it upstream or down. I can’t stop thinking the way I do, just as no one really changes. Most characters stay with me, and they are who they are, just as if they were real. It’s the same with single digits, oddly enough.

The alphabet doesn’t have a strong personification, but the colors are usually pretty static. When I read, the synesthesia isn’t very prominent, and I absentmindedly know the colors of each word. It’s just that the colors of words don’t pertain to the content being written, and it doesn’t really draw any initial thought or reminder that they have colors in my head. To explain this I guess would be to compare it to another sense. You feel things all the time; but usually the feel of something isn’t thought worthy. When I open a door, I don’t stop and think about how amazing the worn down metal feels on my fingers, and how cool and beautiful it is. But if you feel a super soft shirt, you might think to yourself “Wow this shirt is super soft”, or not depending on your view of soft objects. Hopefully you weren’t strangled with some soft fabric when you were a kid or else this post is going to take a dark turn. Anyway, that’s the same for synesthesia. When I read, it isn’t important to register every color of every word. Just as when you go about your day, every texture of every thing isn’t some extraordinary experience of the senses.

And synesthesia, though some people think it must be extra interesting to go about my day in that world, isn’t as prominent to me as I make it seem. I know others feel it more intense, but most days I don’t even spend time thinking about how my world is different than everyone else’s. Yeah, four is pink, and yeah that song is a cool combination of warm colors, but it is secondary. It doesn’t interfere with my daily life.

The only thing that interferes is when I attempt explaining it, or having a conversation about it without making it seem like I’m bragging about my super cool brain mix up.

I’m not crazy, I swear.

Because, in the end, I may be really different, but I’m the same in the inside. Or, well, not really because my senses are scrambled but- you know what I mean. I guess I just wanted to actually formally explain it, instead of further confusing people, or having people tell me I’m making things up. Hopefully this was interesting, and hopefully I’ll get back to fiction writing very soon in the near future. If only I could go back to the future.

“Just talk. However if you mess up, everyone will remember forever and you should probably consider never speaking ever again. On the second thought, you shouldn’t even open your mouth; what you have to say isn’t even worth the oxygen.” -My thoughts everyday

This is going to be a different kind of post. It’s not an original writing piece, it isn’t a poem, and it isn’t any sort of minor update about my life. If this sort of thing doesn’t interest you, feel free to stop reading. I know my stats for this site, and I guarantee that most of my followers don’t check the recent posts, and for whichever reason someone is periodically viewing my blog from my school. Nevertheless, if you do decide to read this, I hope it provides something for you, even if it is mild annoyance.

Society.

It is the word used when describing many conflicts about a character in a book. Rarely is it actually applicable to life; most people are hyperbolic in nature, and their man vs society complaints are overstated. However, in those rare cases, it’s true. I might be hyperbolic, as a natural story teller (if I do say so myself), but I feel like in my case woman vs society, among other things, is the perfect description. Society is a term I use on a daily basis, usually in some philosophical complaint that I vent to my friends, who are thinking about other things while I talk. Don’t worry, they wont get offended because even my friends don’t read this. But day to day I find myself talking about society, it’s faults, and most importantly, my role in it.

I am a student. Or at least that’s my current occupation according to job applications. I am a student who attends school and studies (rarely) for school and whose main topic of choice at parties I don’t want to attend is school. And school work, and school people and school teachers- is my parallelism getting the point across? School. The main thing people of my age, who aren’t my peers but I’ll get to that later, converse about is school. We all think there are problems with the American Education system, and you can have a boring conversation about that with them, you know, if it would do any good.

Because we can do nothing about our woes. I’m a junior and since I don’t care so much about lower grades, I have no incentive to aid the problematic high school system. What I do spend my time on is the fact that although I can drive a car and potentially leave the state or kill another person, I can’t walk in a hallway without a piece of paper signed. I can’t go to the library and study for this ever-involvement in my life that is school without a dash of red pen on my piece of paper. I have gotten confronted by an administrator for opening a door. I was standing, looking outside at the beautiful fall air, and I got chastised before I so dreadfully admitted I wasn’t going to leave. I’ve been denied travel to a classroom because I forgot this little card with my face on it. I’ve been scolded by the vice-principal who believed a rumor about me, but not my side of the story. This same vice-principal wouldn’t change my gym class when I was being horrendously bullied because it hadn’t “reached a social media level”.

Now, I could blame the school, and it’s people. But it isn’t their fault. I guess it’s mine, and I’ll tell you why. As someone who is almost an adult, I respect that the number on a piece of paper that says my birth date is not the one that allows me to make my own decisions. But I hate being talked down to, so as I feel I am a mentally adult, I talk to other adults equally. Let me just tell you: it frustrates the hell out of them. How can such an ignorant girl like me think that I can address my issues in a professional adult manner? How could I, the almost 17 year old, think that I can calmly talk to a security guard about walking in a hallway? Society has skewed everyone’s perception of age as a number and a number alone.

I may still get upset at things I shouldn’t, you know like my feelings, but mentally I like to treat everyone equal. Of course, I should be so naive as to think that society could handle an outlier as myself. I’ve always been weird. In fact, I’ve been told I was weird as long as I can remember, not just as a joke by relatives, but as an insult among peers. Again, I use the term “peers” lightly.

You see, I know I don’t fit into society. And if you’ve read this far you probably can tell I’m just a sarcastic misanthrope. But ever since elementary school, people have singled me out, called me names. The first time I met my table partner in the 2nd grade, she said, and I quote, “I hate you.” I’m sure she’s still just as charming. Nevertheless, in middle school people would constantly call my name, and if I looked over, they’d start laughing. This continued until freshman year of high school, sometimes by people I didn’t even know. Sophomore year, we we all matured, and people started using the word “Bitch” a little more. I’m just glad their vocabulary was growing. Illiteracy can be a dangerous thing. This year has been mostly of rumors, and I have to give them a little credit for using their imagination. Cognitive growth is always important.

So, socially, society is against me. This is why I don’t have many peers. The ones that are my age, and tolerate my weirdness, usually go to confiding in me. Something about having a limited social life and being somewhat out of the loop must be great for telling secrets to. I’d never know, because I’m usually quiet about my awful home life, parent’s divorce, and lack of support for everything I love. But what ever, who cares about who I actually am, let’s just make fun of me more.

If you’re still reading, props to you because this is all most likely coming out as extremely complainy, which it isn’t supposed to be. Maybe it is, but I’m not done so hang in there. Thanks.

I’d be pretty down with the whole woman vs society thing, except for the fact that I’m not sure what I’m doing entirely wrong. I’m not going to tell you that I’m just “being myself” because that really isn’t the case. I change my personality, usually just a tad, for the person I’m with at the time. I get along better with them and they don’t think of me as so weird. I try to enjoy the things that my acquaintances enjoy, but sometimes it’s hard. When I do express my opinion, people give me the complaint that it’s too strong. This is usually because I don’t want to argue. If I do argue, just for argument’s sake, I am always the first one to end it. But the problem is, in today’s culture, everyone has to defend their opinion until they win, or if it’s a draw, they get all emotional about it. I end the argument because it’s pointless. I’m not going to change how I feel, and if you feel strongly about something, good for you. The world needs more people that have their views but can tolerate others. Sometimes I just want to tell someone how I feel about something, anything- even something as stupid as wallpaper- and not have someone immediately try to convince me that floral is always the way to go. Maybe I like striped wallpaper. I don’t need to defend myself to you simply because you can’t understand that not everything is a battle.

So that was a little bit of a vent. But that’s how I feel. If I ever say how I emotionally feel, well let me just say: it’s a stupid thing to do; especially among teenagers. God forbid I feel sad because guess what, someone else thinks they feel sadder and they have to justify such “fact” with a compelling story and make the entire group listening obey by their manipulation of the mind. God forbid I have any emotion, because it looks like I am the one looking for attention (which I like to stray away from) and it turns into a debate whether my emotion is real.

I can’t win. And I know you probably feel like You can’t win, but I’m going to be narcissistic just a little bit longer.

Society is great because not only can’t I fit in, enjoy, and be a part of it, I can’t win at even the little things. I can’t get my math grade up, I can’t count on something I’m looking forward to, and I can almost always know that when I run into that wall, someone will laugh at me. I know that every little thing I do will be wrong, and people will not forget it. I know that I laugh at inappropriate times, and I know that I probably dressed wrong to this occasion. Every little thing I do will be a fault in society’s falsely perfect face.

I’ve contemplated abandoning the entire commodity. But someone can’t even do that without the people of society looking in and judging how stupid, weird, or bitchy that seems to be. So I’m stuck here. With people who hate me for no reason, people who can’t handle little jokes, people who can’t let me think anything without Big Brother’s scold, and every situation I have or will ever fail at. I’d like to leave because my distaste is so repulsive that the thought of living another 70 years with this world makes me want to vomit. But it’s something I have to do. I rather find happiness than please the people around me.

Society, as it is, isn’t accepting. The people who we live with aren’t accepting of others, yet want to do what they wish without judgement. Society isn’t welcoming for someone like me, or for people with similar views. I’m not trying to be some angsty teenager, I’m not trying to say something no one has said before. I just want my view of society out there. My claim may not be as thesis-perfect as that essay I wrote for AP Language was, and my views may be contradictory. But overall, I think it all boils down to evidence and examples of what I see everyday. I’ve watched other people get bullied, I’ve watched someone fall off a bike, I’ve seen a kid get yelled at by it’s parents when it did nothing wrong. I can’t step in and help any of it. Society is disgusting, unwelcoming, and overall full of a million faults. I don’t fit into it. A lot of people don’t fit into it. And it isn’t fair.

Life isn’t fair. Well, genius, I know that. I don’t know my exact claim to this essay-like grievance, but I know that it shouldn’t be this way. People shouldn’t be singled out for being different. People shouldn’t be automatically assumed they’re up to no good. No one should have to accept that they are alone in this world. A number on a piece of paper shouldn’t have to guarantee your success, but it does. And I know that I can’t change that, and I know that no one can change that, but it bothers me and it will forever be bothersome.

I’ve gone on long enough, and odds are I’ll add something in as I anxiously look for errors, but for now, this is my, well, perception of the entire affair. It is kind of rambling, kind of intellectual, and most of all, true. If you have any problem, please comment. I’d love to hear your views, and how you probably think mine are completely misguided.

The WordPress.com stats helpers prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.

I didn’t do much, but hey. Whatever. Hope everyone had a good year, even if good means learning from the bad. I’d like to thank everyone who views my blog, and everyone who follows it. Even if you’re just stumbling upon this after a bunch of internet clicks, I thank you. Hopefully in 2015 I can write more, and further develop what I can some day call a style. Have a great year with writing!

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 610 times in 2014. If it were a cable car, it would take about 10 trips to carry that many people.

I haven’t made a blog post in so long that I didn’t get the memo that WordPress made some changes to their layout. And since my laptop completely flat-lined and I’m using a spare from my mother’s office, all my important writings have been moved to a special red flash drive which is more important than certain people’s lives at the moment. Melodramatic writer’s complaints aside, the issue has made writing a little less convenience. And I won’t even factor in my will to write anything particularly productive. I haven’t been able to complete a new piece in a while now, and it’s starting to show.

Essentially, I’ve been thinking in my head. I know, how crazy of me. But thinking in my head, in my own voice, isn’t the best thing, especially when I was trying to start getting the High(er) story going. Our main character was a good idea, she just wasn’t anything special in terms of characters. My will power to keep her along, to keep thinking of how she would respond to her situations, wasn’t strong enough. So as anyone would think: If I can’t keep this character, how can I keep others?

The answer, my dear Watson, was to take a break completely. And that is how this blog went from regularly running to being completely dry for the better part of two months. Once in a while I checked the stats, which believe me aren’t anything special, but creating a new post or page wasn’t on my mind. I’ve been doing a lot of that lately, and that is how this particular post gets more interesting.

THE INTERESTING PART

What matters in this world? I don’t know, and since I haven’t been keeping a journal lately, I shall contemplate meaningless questions into a great online failure. See that? It’s the seat-belt sign. Buckle up.

Nothing matters in this world. We are all just living, waiting for nothing, doing nothing, and expecting something to conjure itself out of nothing. And you can call me a pessimist, but I find that pointless. Sure, happiness is the key to success. But with that logic, all unhappy people should be unsuccessful, and with that logic why are so many people successful at being unhappy? Why are so many people successful simply because they are unhappy? Why do I feel the need to get a name plate entitled “Socrates”? Are people about to shout DIGRESSION at me or is my hat on backwards?

If you don’t get my humor, I forgive you.

The reason, though, that I brought up a bunch of hilarious ramblings that are only funny to me, is because they are important. Or, at least they must be because every day it seems like someone is asking me these questions. When you come from a biased family and hang around highly religious friends, your argument doesn’t seem to matter. And the meaning of life is almost always some unbalanced chemical reaction about living eternally. And I, for one, hate loosing that argument because I’m one of those poor unfortunate souls not suffering from schizophrenia.

What matters in this world? Why am I talking in circles? To provoke thought?

I question, therefore I am.

My entire existence has been based off questions. I’m sure you could come up with something more awesome and deep, but you’d be lying. Questions are what fuels us. And I’m not trying to sound like Neil Tyson or Bill Nye , but without questions there wouldn’t be any reason to live. The answer you gave way up my pitiful paragraphs ago, is the answer. My own answer, is the answer. There is no reason to live, and nothing matters. Maybe you love someone, and they are your reason. But even that isn’t a reason. One could write a paper, and then burn it. What was on the paper doesn’t matter, because it is gone and can never be gotten back. What was on the paper does matter, because it most likely was the reason it needed to be burned. Without what was on the paper, it wouldn’t have been burned. Without what was on the paper, there would be no paper. Without the paper, there’d be no metaphor I just came up with.

You don’t need to burn books to destroy a culture.

And you don’t need reason to get reason. I know I’m not making any sense anymore. Perhaps this is why I needed to take a break from writing. I’ll probably delete this part of this post tomorrow, when I’ll have had more sleep. But for now, internet people, think upon the world as if there is no meaning. If you realize that life is finite, then you’ll love it and cherish it more. Don’t feel bad for the drug addicts because they aren’t going to heaven, and don’t feel bad for yourself because you’re sad. Just live because the reason you’re here isn’t a reason. You’re here, and you’re reading this, and tomorrow maybe you will smile at that random person, because they are here, and that’s all that matters.

People call me a fool because I’m not looking ahead. People call me wise because I don’t live in the past. But there only is the now, and now has no meaning, so go give it some, even if it’s meaningless. you can’t be wrong, you can only end up burning the paper.

For the average teenager, this can be pretty challenging. For me, the power of a lunar satellite is enough. I’ve always been interested in the moon;I actually gave a report on space in the 5th grade naming all the planets in order and explaining to the bored class what the different eclipses were. I’ve gotten up at 2:00AM to watch a meteor shower once. So hopefully now you understand how much of a nerd I am, and getting up at 4:30 for this magnificent portrayal of the sunlight bending around the earth was essential for me to watch.

I did my usual morning stuff, which is still not like how a 16 year old girl should act. I made coffee and watched the news. I was stoked to hear the weather man, a fellow person interested in this kind of stuff, talk about the total lunar eclipse. And to my utter disappointment, he sadly told the news that Rochester was going to have too much cloud coverage. I’m used to things not going in my part for the win, but this was just annoying.

So I continued my morning, and I know this is boring folks, but stay with me. And as I brushed my hair in preparation for showering, a shimmer caught my eye out of the little crack in my curtains.

It was the moon.

After I got dressed, in very office casual clothing mind you, I strolled outside with my shitty stadium binoculars and went to look for a good place to watch the partial phase turn to the start of the total eclipse. The street was pitch black and it was chilly, but celestial objects are a stronger force, literally. To sum things up, I ended up standing at the end of my street, near a lamppost.

It was a great view of the partial phase. And then things got interesting. I heard the loud roar of a motorcycle, and while sipping my coffee, turned to see a biker idly standing beside me.

“Yeah I saw the moon to looks neat,” The fellow yelled over the loudness of the bike.

“Oh it’s gonna get awesome,” I say back, kind of soft since it’s only 5:50 in the morning. And he rolls away. And this is the type of thing you get at 5:50 in the morning.

You also get baby foxes. I heard a scatter and turned and see a little fox running along the road like it’s a human or something. Now, I must say I was actually kind of frightened when it stopped and stared at me because all I could imagine was a gang of them with rabies attacking me and I can’t get help because it is now 5;56 in the morning and who the hell is awake!?

But the fox just scampered along the side of the road, making it’s daily travel to the office or wherever important foxes need to be in the morning. And, no, the fox did not say anything.

And more cars rolled by, and a waved to a few runners, being healthier than I’ll ever be. And all in all, it was pretty great. I strolled back home at 6:30 to gather my school things and got one last glimpse of the total phase before the bus came. But the total wasn’t very bright and “blood moon”-y as I thought it would be because of the clouds and the brightness of the sun and everything.

I guess the entire point I am trying to make with this lengthy story is that even though to most people this was a mundane event- which I will clarify that a total lunar eclipse is cool not mundane- in my eyes it was something I’ve been looking forward to since August. My childhood was largely impacted with my dad’s enjoyment for the moon, and even though he couldn’t watch this with me, I kept remembering those times while I watched the eclipse this morning. And I will probably always remember this morning because every little event that happened, effected my overall story. Perhaps not in your vantage point, but from mine, it was clear and memorable.

And these types of things happen to everyone. To relate this back to writing, jot down the next time a simple thing is really meaningful to you, or when you encounter out of the ordinary things. Personally I feel it helps capture the event as well as process it into something more real, more tangible, even if it is just in words rather than images.

Whichever phase you are in life at the moment, take the time to enjoy the little things. It’s really important.

Being named Harvard, I was expected to go to Harvard. I was expected to earn good marks and grades and go to Harvard and perhaps transfer to an even better Ivy League university after I had a major and aced that major. I was supposed to be made fun of lightly for being named after the college I ended up actually going to and to be popular because of the light taunts. I’d get a great girl, and we would enjoy light necking and holding hands and going to football games. We would read books and talk about books and study together. I’d marry this woman and we would have children, two girls and a boy. I would not name the boy Harvard, though I would joke about the name Yale because Yale is also a college. The girl’s names would be Ellen, after my grandmother, and perhaps another name my wife liked, such as April. They would get good grades like their parents, and maybe they would all go to Harvard together, in respect for their father’s name and reputation at the school. It all would work out, except that I never got accepted into Harvard. Or Yale. Or any college for that matter. But my story was convincing, wasn’t it. Perhaps it made you forget about the title, about how it was supposed to be a lesson. Perhaps not.

Reading classics and even good modern literature, you can find yourself developed within each character and their thoughts and their story. You don’t think normally when reading exactly how convincing it truly is. You get lost in pages and pages of rants that stick in between dialogue simply because you can; it is a book, after all. But what is that extra bit of backbone, that little piece of ramling of the character doing? It is making the story convincing; it is subconsciously willing you to read it more, and to get involved with the story. Care no longer about the slow ride of hell that the plot has come to be, care no more about our one dimensional character villains! Care only about how you relate, make sure you care only about the main character, only care that you want to read more and that this will sell! Sure, it sounds nice and adds for word count. Sure, it’s great to know the voice and the characterization and the generous subplot that is a human mind, but do you really need it?

Yes. Simply put, a story must be convincing.

So distract your reader.

How do we distract our beloved readers? Firstly, forget their beloved. Hate them. They are your prey– just for now. Now, what does your prey want? Something to eat, after all this particular prey does also fall under the scavenger category (Score one for using Biology outside of class). Make a vibrant voice that flows and carries it’s own weight with ease. Good. Now make sure the voice in itself is convincing. Like mine; listen to the words instructing without condescending. There you go. Now rant. Flashback. Do something that distracts. Well done. Slowly leak back into your main plot. And you’ve done it.

Perhaps not all strategies work, and most don’t because a simple instruction can get pretty muffled under the sounds of keyboards clicking frantically as writers try to follow them, but still go “In their own style” Because why not act like some super cool hipster while you sit at home at your computer like you’ve done all day? Writers be warned: You’re not as unique as you think you are. You are not as special or creative as you’ve come to image yourself. I may not have gotten into Harvard, or even Yale for that matter, but what community college has taught me goes beyond all you pretentious freaks.

Do you see what I’ve done? I’ve gotten you involved in my story. Perhaps you were getting annoyed because you indeed are some kind of freak, pretentiousness to be decided at a later date, or perhaps you don’t have as much wit as myself. But I’ve gotten you involved in my story no matter the emotional commitment. Or I haven’t. What do I know? I couldn’t get into Harvard, and it’s my last name.

*

Written by Kylie Eileen, who also is not in Harvard, or Yale for that matter, nor intends on applying to either of these institutions, though wishes sincerely that the somewhat humorous blog post of today has helped at least one human on this earth see how simply writing in a different voice with many additional anecdotes even in a post about such ideas, can get one involved or interested reading it further, which is such a sneaky but awesome, if I do say so myself, idea which was therefore made into said blog post. (Hooray for run-on sentences. Hemingway would be proud).

I’ve just started my junior year of high school, taking two AP classes for the first time. Being a junior and being in harder classes, I’m going to be busy. Not to mention being at the school building until 11 come November when I work on our musical. It is going to prove to be a stressful and eventful year ahead, including (hopefully) a school trip to Spain, College visits and the junior prom. You’ll have to understand there may be breaks in posts in the near future.

I hadn’t gotten to write this much this summer for various reasons. I was busy, with stage crew and getting my life together and such, but I also needed a hiatus. I’ve started to write many works this summer, but haven’t completed one yet. I call myself a writer, but when times like this come along, I feel like I am lying to the world. I just don’t always have the words, and forcing myself to make a blog post can worsen that effect.

When I don’t have the motivation to write, I’m thinking… or doing homework. I’m not all gone. I’ll be thinking of the past, the future, what I have to do later, what I want to write, what I need to write, and so on. It’s just that sometimes even all the ideas I have simmering in my mind don’t have their own words, their own little voices to tell the story yet. It doesn’t mean I’ve given up altogether- at least I hope not.

So, when you’re looking through the blogs you subscribe to, note that just because I haven’t written in a while doesn’t mean I will stop entirely. And I haven’t stopped writing; I’m probably still working on one of many pieces on my computer or scribbling creative writing paragraphs in my notebooks when I’m not listening to teachers.

I just don’t have the words right now. I will again, but they’re not with me at the moment. I need to make sure the voice is good, the ideas are fresh, characters are elaborate, and everything is in it’s place before I start writing again. I also need motivation, and that isn’t something that comes naturally to me all of the time.

Thanks for reading this, and if you have the time please tell me your thoughts below. I’ll be busy, I’ll be thinking, and I’ll be writing- just perhaps not on this blog. Check in once in a while and I’ll be sure to send a tweet out if a new post is up. For now, have a great day (Or night, for you insomniacs) and keep on writing… That is, if anyone actually reads this. Or cares.

I would like to dedicate a post to one of the things I actually enjoy doing in this world. There is a fictional story about my experiences on the crew for my high school in the Longer works-short story section of this site, but I feel as if the story was only hinting at the darker portions of the topic. So, without further ado about nothing, here is my article-like post about the infamous Stage Crew.

Stage crew is a lonely place full of magic and mystery…

Summer time is always easier for everyone. There’s no school, people take vacations; everything is just more laid back, more relaxed. For people like me, who don’t have many friends and rarely step out of the house when they don’t need to, it can be awful. It can get boring, doing the same thing everyday. Waking up at noon and wondering why you even got up at all. It all puts this invisible pressure in place that stabs the point even further that there is nothing. You wake up, you do nothing, you sleep. Wishing that maybe summer wasn’t so laid back. Wishing that there was something. Summer isn’t easier for everyone.

I started Stage Crew the second week of Freshman year of high school. It seems like decades away, now. I had this image, this idea of myself on the stage crew, doing behind the scenes work, and going up to the catwalk and throwing confetti at everyone. No one would know it was me. Maybe it was for a reason, maybe I just wanted to make students smile and janitors frown. Maybe it was that every show is the best when there is confetti involved. I dont know. But the idea stayed with me through the entire eighth grade, and even more so that I found the stage- just barely as I had no clue where anything in the school was- and attended my first crew meeting.

Now, I know this probably doesn’t seem important or even a significant event, but it was. There were two other kids there, at first, and the director (who my former friend actually really didn’t like because in 7th grade she dropped a microphone and almost broke it and she got chastised). I was shown the around the stage and the PAC, or Performing Arts Center for all you liberals, which included curtains, tall ropes, an even taller ladder, stairs, sound booth, and sound and light boards, respectively. More people showed up, some of which were in my grade, and we took the grand tour which I’ve taken countless times now. The very last thing we got to see on the tour was the catwalk.

The catwalk is, still, my favorite place in the auditorium. Probably my favorite place in the school besides my hidden spot where I skip class- I mean. What. …Anyway, when we got up to the catwalk, it was amazing. I’m not a heights person, but I can tell you that I was not one of the people freaking out. I enjoyed being up there. Yes, it’s always a bit scary at first, especially when certain people think that jumping on it is a very comical thing to do to freshman, but being so high above all the seats and seeing the stage from such a view trump all fears.

After the first meeting, the actual crew part starts. I have to say I was a bit skeptical at how much effort it was going to take to put on such a highly anticipated show. But you learn, as you would learn anything else. The difference with this than learning social studies or english, is that with the crew, came the social tolerances and expectations. As a person with limited friends, it took time to be accustomed to things. I was just a freshman at the time, and this was fall, before winter came around and things got bad. I still didn’t feel like I belonged in the crew.

The set of people that our crew contained was actually pretty interesting. I’ll start with the director. He really enjoys what he does, I have to say that. There’s an odd, and at times annoying, passion for what we all do. The play is strangely important to him which I can only assume reflects back on some kind of childhood turmoil- I’m only kidding, Pat. The other kids, they all have their own story. There was the girl who was all into technology with a sister who was into sports. There were these twins, one of whom pushed me into a door whilst calling me a “Stupid freshman”. The other ended up ‘dating’ another crew member in some kind of strained relationship that threatened to succumb to the inevitable after only days. Dont worry about him, now is dating some other crew member, this one more girly. There are brothers, who act a lot like each other in some respects and very different in others, as you could imagine. There are classic ‘band geeks’ that actually have a pretty large social life. There was the goth chick who sassed our math teacher, and her boy friend with the most annoying speech impediment. There was her other boyfriend with obvious family issues and unstable emotions. And there were others that came and went.

Most of the people were pretty tightly knit with each other, always carrying side conversations. But as much as we are diverse, there really isn’t a whole lot of things different between us. Perhaps that’s why I never left the stage crew. For some reason, the people who stay, the people who are actually involved, belong. Not to mention the things they all talk about can be pretty hilarious, and, at other times, so explicit it’s funny.

We all joined for a reason. Maybe we were dragged into it. Maybe we just wanted to throw confetti, maybe we want to go into theatre, maybe it is just another thing to to. It is a good outlet, I have to say. If you can’t get all your emotions out at the shooting range, why not carry heavy objects and use power drills and make something that in the long run, you can be proud of. Not that I’m not proud of my bullet hole filled targets.

Burglars ain’t got nothing on me

I did stage crew only a little bit last summer, and after a rough fall, I wasn’t sure if I was ready to go back full time this summer. But I did, and it was a good choice on my part. I say things like this lightly around them, it’s mainly a group of guys and one other girl so I can’t get too sappy, but we really do all connect. I’m not sure how other schools have it, but the thing we have going really works.

It may just be a club, another thing to do, but I think that it has changed me. I learned things that came in handy when I had to paint my room, and later the entire downstairs of our house. It is a thing that makes you feel useful. My father got to see the show we all put on last fall, and it felt nice to prove that going every day, sometimes until 11pm, was worth it. The outcome seems to always be worth the long hours and tedious tasks.

It is nice to have a hobby, a thing that you can call yours, especially when friends are busy with their own things. Stage crew made me realize how much time it takes to build things up. You can’t put up four walls and call it a house and move on. You have to measure, you have to adjust, you have to paint more than one coat. Four walls doesn’t make a house. Living in a rut everyday, doesn’t make a life.

Summer is a time to be laid back. Stage crew is more laid back in the summer, but it is the farthest thing from a rut. There are new challenges everyday. There are new things I get to hear everyone talk about. There is always something to do, and even when there isn’t, there’s always some movie (that I really don’t want to see) that we can watch. The energy thats there, even when we are all running on empty, is incredible. If it wasn’t for that first meeting, that first glimpse of a new reality, I don’t know what I would be today. Probably bored out of my mind.

Can I throw the confetti now?

(I stole this picture from the Stage Crew facebook page, in case of any copyright nazis out there)

Ah, the old “Write what you know”. It’s something I’ve been hearing all my life, something that’s a part of society as a general rule, or guideline. How can you possibly write something that you don’t know about? Well, for one, there is google, but let’s discuss the character portion of this so called ‘guideline’. It may be what stands between you and that Pulitzer Prize in your future.

It is important for every writer to connect with their main character on some kind of level. You have particular goals for your main character, either good or bad, and they are the same goals that push the plot forward and keep readers turning the pages. Connecting with your MC is also effective when deciding what happens next, what he or she is thinking, and especially dialogue. But there comes a point when connecting too much is a problem.

I know that you’re thinking: But, Kylie, I am my MC. I am the one who is writing him and shouldn’t we be similar since we are sharing the same brain space?

Well, yes. But, no.

Let us take a step back and look at some very successful books. I call them classics, and in my other post “The difference between a novel, bestseller, and a classic” I discuss the main points that a classic book contains. In that post I stress that there are strict places only for thought and muddling over the works of the world within a novel. What I have left out was the characteristics of the Main Character.

Let’s look at one of my personal favorites, The Great Gatsby. I’m sure that Scott Fitzgerald connected with Nick and Jay alike and that connection gave him the will to write. But our man Scott wasn’t solely like either one in his real life. I don’t think he lived any lifestyle remotely similar to that of Jimmy Gatz before of after the days of writing exercises in a notebook. You see, he didn’t have to live in a mansion with parties that consisted of flappers and pianists in order to write such an amazing book. He was separated from Gatsby enough so that he look at the character and write it from Nick’s perspective.

Still not believing me? Let us take a look at another famous novel called Catcher in the Rye. When Salinger was confronted by tons of angsty teens, I don’t think he was thinking anywhere along the lines of “Aww sweet, man. People who hate phonies just like me!” Infact, I know this for sure thanks to a documentary which is on Netflix called, not so surprisingly, “Salinger”. He has told people specifically “I am a fiction writer” and I believe that he did so well as a fiction writer because he isn’t a duplicate of Holden Caulfield. He was different, and allowed himself to separate from the character. Sure they had things in common, smoking, I believe is one of those things, and they are both male, so more connections can be made there. But he wasn’t exactly like his MC.

The Movie “The United States of Leland” Is a brilliant film, which is told a lot like a visual novel, but also focuses on writing as a major theme. Hotness of Ryan Gosling as a teen put aside, there was one quote I remember specifically and it pertains to this very blog post. Paraphrasing: “Let me guess. You’re writing your first novel, which doubles as a semi biographic, and are on the second chapter. Me.” Now, the part of the first novel doubling as a book about himself (The male writer and also inspiring teacher role) really made me smile. As said in another post, I really don’t like the debut novels and this is one exact reason for why.

Writers want to write what they know. They know a hell of a lot about themselves. So why not write that? Incorporate a ton of your own characteristics and beliefs into your protagonist so it will be easier to write. Sadly, easiest isn’t the most effective. So to wrap up this long post, I feel that it is very important for writers to write what they perhaps know, but not what they know about themselves. Explore your main character’s unique thoughts. Make your main character nothing like you, and be able to live as someone else for the duration of time it takes you to write your piece.

Every author dreams of this. Becoming a bestseller or a classic book that one day kids in school will read and either be amazed or bored. Either way, the teachers explain how great your writing is, how unique and advanced you can tell a story. People will write papers on your book, arguing over every little metaphor you have intertwined in your piece. But how do you get there? What makes books classics or bestsellers and how do underrated novels compare to these? Well, provided here is my opinion.

The novel

You can find it in a bulk section at a store whose main good isn’t literature. You stumble across it at your local library and read it because it appears to have potential. It is a debut, or only novel, by some young author who went to college and studied the perfect way to tell a story. And it’s not that good. It is written in that same voice every novel seems to be written in these days. Modern writing has that voice, you all know it. Most of the time, characters are meant to be spicy, but they are blander than water. No matter how many pages of flavoring you add to that water, it’ll always be water nonetheless.

The novel, is in a sense, the same as the Bestseller. It’s new, overlooked at first, and modern. It has the expected plot twists, or it has none at all. And of course a boring book is a boring book, but you can distinct it from a good boring book. The novel has a small fan base with an author who is trying to do all the right things, and most likely is. They just couldn’t reach bestseller. Or they weren’t good enough, but bad novels are a totally different topic.

After you’ve read through the novel, you’re either in a “meh” kind of state or you can’t believe how no one has ever heard of this amazing book you’ve found. How could no one have read it? It’s perfect. They did all the right things. But it’s not a bestseller.

The bestseller

You’ve either read it because it sounded interesting, or you have to go with what society tells you. Or you pulled a hipster and didn’t conform to the rules of reading and decided against this sappy teen love story that has millions hashtagging away at the essence of it’s glory. Maybe it’s an adult contemporary type of piece and soccer moms everywhere are compelled to buy, read, and then tweet about it. Whichever type of bestseller it is, it is a bestseller nonetheless and odds are, you’ll end up reading it.

But are the novel and the bestseller so different after all? I don’t believe so. I think the bestseller is just the older twin of the novel. You see, both the bestseller and the novel tell the story in that voice, but maybe the bestseller has a voice with more relations to the reader. Maybe our bestseller has better descriptions and dialogue. Perhaps it’s that motif we keep seeing throughout the whole thing that melts our hearts. Whatever it is, the bestseller wins by a hair and the popularity keeps multiplying until you can’t leave a room without hearing that author’s name. But the twins both lack something that the classic contains.

The classic

You’ve all read it in either grade, middle, or high school. You probably hated it but love it now. Perhaps it is a romanticism or a victorian work or literature that for some reason people can’t stress enough on how good it is. Most bestsellers won’t become classics. I’ve seen shelves of bestsellers and almost all the names I’ve never heard of, much like the novels, huh?

The classic is a classic for a reason. And I will tell you why. Bestseller books have great descriptions. Pretty good character development. They’re relatable, they’re maybe even whitty. But they aren’t classics. The don’t contain philosophy.

I understand you’re probably lost, but if you look at classic literature, there is less action and adventure, less physical description and more emotional description. For an example, let’s take one of my favorite books, The Catcher In The Rye. We can relate to Holden, everyone can on some level, and we understand the setting completely and thoroughly. But Holden rants. And rants. And goes on and on about life. In these rants are his ways of viewing life. Almost every sentence is quotable in his rants, thats how much ‘philosophy’ and emotional depth we have here. This is the addition that I feel makes bestsellers into something more.

I said before that Holden was quotable. Most classic books are quotable. The Great Gatsby is another example. It’s extremely quotable, has great description, and even goes into the deep emotional parts where nothing is said, no plot goes, but there are things being worked out within our character. And bestsellers, along with novels, do this at a minimal.

Overview

All in all, I think and I hope that I have made my ideas clear and understandable. The novel and the bestseller run hand in hand, while the classic literature exceeds them both with far more traits than what I have mentioned. Hopefully someday, if not already, I can have your bestseller in mind when writing something of this sort. Keep in mind, also, that this is just my opinion. I do understand the many other qualities which go into all three of these categories and determine the success of each one. Hopefully these qualities will make, and not break, you and your writing.

Kylie Eileen

Thanks for reading! Please share your opinions below in the comments or send me a tweet as I am always open to everyone’s ideas. I can write today because I got my cast off and can more freely move my fingers and wrist:) More posts to come soon- as always, keep on writing!

Sadly, I have fractured my wrist and the cast prevents me from typing with two hands. So, for the time being, I will be taking a sad break from writing. Hopefully the cast will be off within the next month or so and I can continue to post blog posts, but for now, I’ll be stepping away. Thank you for your support and keep on writing- and don’t fracture your wrist!